Richard Lee McNair (born December 19, 1958) is a convicted murderer known for his ability to escape and elude capture. In 1987, McNair murdered one man and shot a second man four times during a botched robbery. He is currently serving two terms of life imprisonment for these crimes including escaping from prison. After McNair's arrest, he escaped three times from three different institutions using various creative methods. On his first attempt, he used lip balm to squeeze out of a pair of handcuffs. He escaped a second time by crawling through a ventilation duct. In his last escape from a federal prison in April 2006, he escaped by concealing himself in a pallet of used postal mailbags and successfully convinced a police officer he was not the prison escapee but actually a jogger. This resulted in his mugshot being featured a dozen times on the TV show America's Most Wanted, and made him one of the top fifteen fugitives wanted by US Marshals. McNair traveled to Canada twice in order to evade capture, traveling across the country for over a year before being apprehended in a random police check. Much of what the public knows about McNair's escape and his time as a fugitive is through McNair's prison correspondence with a Canadian journalist, Byron Christopher. Overview In November 1987, while attempting a burglary in Minot, North Dakota, McNair was surprised by two men and murdered one of them. McNair's murder of Jerry Thies occurred at a grain elevator operated by the Farmers Union Elevator Co. while McNair was a sergeant posted at the nearby Minot Air Force Base. A second man was shot four times, but survived. When the police called McNair in for questioning, McNair surrendered a concealed handgun. He was later sentenced to two life sentences for murder and attempted murder, and a thirty-year prison sentence for burglary. McNair's first escape attempt occurred at the Minot municipal police station in 1988, shortly after he had been arrested. McNair's first period as a fugitive lasted only a few hours, after which McNair was quickly recaptured. After his initial arrest, McNair was handcuffed to a chair and left in a room with three detectives. McNair used lip balm, which he had in his pocket, as a lubricant to squeeze his hands free from the handcuffs. McNair then led police on a chase on foot through the town, eventually being